The Lovely Miss Jasmine

If you are a regular here, you are well aware of the fact that I have a friend, Diana, who is struggling with leukemia. She just spent 43 days in the hospital, and I am taking her back again this Friday.

Diana often comments on the blog with the moniker “The Lovely Miss Jasmine” who is actually her dog, a Doberman Pincher. They were best buddies, Diana and Jasmine, so when Diana could no longer care for Jasmine last fall, we asked my Mom and Dad to care for her.

While Diana was in the hospital last week, Jasmine died. My Mom fed her breakfast that morning, took her for a walk, and then Jasmine decided to have a little nap. She died in her sleep, and considering that Doberman’s usually live 9 years or so (Jasmine was 14) it was a pleasant way to go.

After my mother called to tell me, I started driving to my parent's house to help. Jasmine was a very big dog to move, not to mention how upset my mother was. On the way, I was thinking of how to tell Diana. I knew I had to call, the hospital was too far away to deliver the news in person and still help my distressed mother. It was an awful moment, figuring out how to tell someone who is already suffering so deeply that there is even more bad news to be absorbed.

I read an interesting work of fiction a couple of weeks ago – The Grace That Keeps This World by Tom Bailey. In one chapter, a Catholic priest talks about listening to a veteran confess about the Vietnam War. The former soldier, in his fear, had shot an innocent man and failed to rescue an 8 year old girl being raped by other U.S. soldiers. He had carried the weight of his secret, and the sound of her screams, for many years. Bailey writes from the priest’s point of view, “There seemed to be no end to the stories he needed to tell. He spoke, and I listened, absorbing his words, each deed, every act. And as I listened I could not help but recall the story of Jesus’ taking possession of the demons and sending them into a herd of swine and then racing the mad, squealing bunch of them over the cliff….” (the demon story is Matthew 8:28 if you want to look it up)

I often wrestle with what the Apostle John meant when he wrote, “Walk as Jesus walked.” Absorbing my friend’s grief – the pain that was about to feel explosive inside her - was to walk as Jesus walked. There’s a lot to absorb with cancer, and I haven't quite figured out how to cast it all away. I wasn’t sure I had room for more. I sat in the car and debated whether Diana was better off not knowing, whether a white lie or two was justified just this once. As I struggled, I knew that choosing to lie was about self-protection, not friend-protection.

Sitting in my parents’ driveway, and taking a deep breath, I called Diana. I listened as she sobbed and told me how she had just dreamt of Jasmine the night before. Losing a pet is upsetting, under any circumstances, but as I listened to my friend grieve in her hospital room, I knew this was far more complex than anyone, save God, could understand.

Diana gave me instructions for burying Jasmine, and my dear father braved the snow to wrap her in her purple blanket and lay her to rest in my mother’s beautiful garden. Diana plans to plant some flowers there in the spring, a moment I will not only willingly absorb, but one I will choose to keep.